The Chiss brought more ships to bear, stringing kilometer-wide screens of crimson energy ahead of the StealthXs, hoping the elusive starfighters would simply fly into a strike. Jaina and Zekk rolled away from one beam and found another crossing their noses. Jaina pulled up hard, her astromech screeching alarms as the inertial compensator strained to keep the ship together. Zekk dropped his nose and squeezed past underneath, his StealthX shuddering and bouncing as its shields crackled and overloaded.
Enough! To her droid, Jaina said, “Sneaky, give us a one-second fuse and drop a shadow bomb… now!”
The droid tweeted its alarm, but obeyed.
Jaina gave the bomb an aftward Force shove, and a silver flash filled the space behind them. The shock wave hit an instant later, slamming both StealthXs forward and pushing their tails down. Jaina and Zekk did not right themselves. They simply poured on the power and shot away, doing anything they could to change course and location before the Chiss eyes tracking them recovered from the blinding flash of the shadow bomb.
The Chiss brought even more turbolasers to bear-but well behind and below the StealthXs. Jaina and Zekk were close enough now to feel Lowbacca’s presence aboard a heavily armored Dreadnaught escorting the flagship. They closed formation and swung toward it, then finally had time to check their tactical displays.
Unu had listened to their warning. The Great Swarm remained at Qoribu, spread out just beneath the southern pole, with the Hapans taking a supporting position behind the dartships. Meanwhile, the Chiss had given up trying to draw out the
Colony and were smoothly dispersing into their own defensive wall, three layers deep and just out of Hapan turbolaser range.
Could have timed this better.
Going to be hot as a nova getting through that picket field, Zekk agree
The Dreadnaught’s ion drives suddenly brightened, then Jaina and Zekk’s heart sank as the ship turned and accelerated away from the fleet. The Chiss were not fools. Having lost track of their quarry, they had decided to remove the bait.
Could have timed this a lot better. Jaina’s vision blurred with welling tears, and she and Zekk reached out to Lowbacca, trying to reach him through the stupor in which his captors were keeping him, trying to assure him that they would find him, urging him not to lose faith.
They felt a question struggling toward the top of Lowbacca’s mind, then anger; then the Dreadnaught vanished into hyperspace and they felt nothing at all.
THIRTY-NINE
The chamber was choked with dead Gorog, and still more came, pushing through the bodies and floating globules of gore to press their assault, their electrobolt rifles stringing the darkness with bright ropes of silver. Luke was tumbling through the rancid air, somersaulting over forks of crackling energy and spinning away from thrusting tridents, his lightsaber tracing a green cage around him as the blade moved smoothly from defense to offense, from diverting electrobolts to cleaving dark chitin. Mara was twisting along three meters behind him, connected by an invisible Force tether, firing her blaster with one hand and wielding her lightsaber with the other. They were sinking deeper into a battle trance, becoming one with their weapons, becoming the hands of death… and drawing ever closer to Alema Rar.
Luke felt the warm prickle of danger sense and glimpsed a large band of Gorog gliding through the bodies to his right, the electrodes on their rifles already charged and glowing. Still rolling and twisting, fighting off attacks from every direction, he pointed at one of the membrosia givers on the ceiling and used the Force to pull it down-legs flailing and chest booming-into their line of fire.
Alema tried to wrench the creature free, but her grasp was no match for Luke’s. The membrosia giver remained in the thick of battle, a shrill screech rising from its feeding tube, long gobs of membrosia shooting from its abdomen.
Alema spat a Twi’leki curse and ignited her lightsaber. Luke’s chest tightened with cold anger-he had not thought her foolish enough to come for him-and he steeled himself to do what was necessary.
But Alema went straight to the membrosia giver, stunning Luke by sinking her lightsaber deep into the insect’s thorax and dragging the blade along the insect’s entire length. The two halves of the age body drifted apart, and a deafening volley of electrobolt fire lit the darkness.
The Skywalkers ducked away, Luke protecting them with his lightsaber while Mara’s blaster added more dead Killiks to the shell of bodies already shielding them.
“Getting dangerous… in here!” Mara observed.
“Looks like.”
“Time to carry the fight to them.” Mara stopped firing and reached for a fresh power pack. “Time to go after Welk.” She slipped the pack into her blaster and resumed firing. “And Lomi Plo.”